The present invention relates to programmable counters and, more particularly, to a programmable counter which enables any integer value in a selected range to be obtained.
Programmable counters are now finding wide usage, particularly in electronic control arrangements. For example, programmable counters are important components of frequency synthesizers of the type widely used as digital tuners for communication transmitters and receivers. In general, a programmable counter is a frequency divider whose divisors is variable.
Most programmable counters now available suffer from some serious limitations. For example, basic programmable counters have speed limitations, i.e., are unable to properly handle high input frequencies. While one might think that the speed limitations could be handled by inserting a fixed value prescaler between the frequency to be divided and the counter, insertion of such a prescaler results in loss of numeric resolution.